Through the interviews I could gather information how members of the SDA Church related to people of other faiths, apart from Christianity, for the purpose of national development. The interviews were also intended to gain better understanding of what worldview determined or influenced how SDAs related to people practising other religions. Of the 25 SDAs interviewed for this research, 23 believed that the SDA Church was allowed to collaborate with other religious organizations on projects that would improve the socio-economic and political life of Nigerians. This implied that both laity and clergy predominantly felt that such collaboration was a welcome idea. The concerns varied from theological integrity of the SDA Church to preservation of the moral integrity of its members. SDAs wanted to be sure that the outcome of such projects would be representative of what the SDA Church stands for.
For example, Mrs. Wealthwake held the opinion that the SDA Church would be very happy to work in conjunction with other religious groups if there were “means to collaborate with one another, agree together on the platform of religion and be ready for and allow God to be the centre of action.” At the same time, however, many interviewees were quick to point out the need for the church to exercise caution in such collaborative initiatives. Uriah Agbaje, one of the youths interviewed, made the following statement when asked about his thoughts on SDAs collaborating with other religious groups on projects that could advance communities’ socio- economic development:
Well, you see unity is very important and as it concerns worship partnering with other religion I will not totally concur because the fact that we have different doctrines and different views might want to affect the way we see things. So I think we should stand on what we believe because it will go contrary to other religious beliefs.
Another youth, Danny Aju, gave a similar opinion. He desired collaboration with other religions only if it was for evangelization purposes:
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Yea, it depends on the motive you are relating to the other faith. If you are relating with them to win them to Christ you can go ahead. But if it’s for example the church is relating to a government official based on other criteria and not winning their hearts to Jesus Christ, it’s not allowed. But if you’re win[ning] them to Christ it’s allowed.
A slightly modified position from the previous interviewees on collaboration with other religious groups was offered by Mr. King Imopikin. He is of the opinion that the SDA Church could work along with other religious groups, as long as other faiths will accept SDAs without any form of bias. He felt that SDAs were viewed with suspicion and often isolated by others. His opined the following:
In terms of projects that are developmental, I think it is not a bad thing for the [SDA] Church to go into collaboration or partnership with other faiths, like the Muslims or Catholics or whatever. But the challenge has always been that when it comes to that partnership or such collaboration, they have always seen the Adventists as judgmental, so most of the time they are not free to interact with the Adventist Church. And the [SDA] Church has always seen it as “We are on our own,” and that has always been the problem. But if such bias can be removed whereby the Church can collaborate with other sister organizations, it will even give more room for people to see what they have not seen before because most of the problems we are having as a church is because people perceive us from [a] different understanding. For example, some see us as [a] cult group, some see us as [a] Jewish organization, some see us as whatever. But such collaboration will make people closer and see what we do and through that people will be convinced of what we do and see that who we are is not what they thought.
The president of the Western Nigerian Union Conference affirmed the need for the SDA Church to have points of interface with other religious groups for the purpose of developing Nigeria. He made specific reference to the need for nurturing peaceful coexistence as a good reason to have some form of interface. He elaborated:
There are so many points of interface because when you are talking about institutions, [the] religious institution is very powerful to the life of Nigeria as a nation. And if we say because we have different standpoints of biblical understanding we are not going to interface we are just deceiving ourselves. Because Traditionalists, Muslims and Christians and Adventists, there is common denominator, that is God. In every religion bloodshed is forbidden and there is no religion that does not want peace in life, so we have areas of agreement, we have areas of compromise and
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we have areas of uniqueness. There must be interface or dialogue which helps the government have perspectives on how to handle religious issues in our nation.
The responses of the interviewees revealed that although SDAs did not mind to work with other faith groups, there were potential obstacles in doing so. Such obstacles included being misunderstood by other faith groups and fear of compromising its mission. In all, only one of the interviewees could give more specific examples of any collaboration with other faith groups. Furthermore, none of the interviewees had any specific collaborative project with other faith groups initiated by the SDA Church. The fact that SDAs did not initiate collaborative projects with other religious groups may be based on the conscious or sub-conscious notion that it is a unique organization that did not want to compromise theological standards or its mission by such association.